30 April 2018

working on it

Sometimes painting is easy, other times it is difficult.  

A year ago I began a new series of paintings.  The first stages involved layering several blind colour sketches on each of about a dozen stretched canvases.  I'd been making blind drawings in a sketchbook and had decided to try translating the technique on a larger scale.

augury no.15 progression, oil painting, abstract, work in progress
Here is one of the "beginnings"

augury no.15 progression, oil painting, abstract, work in progress
it languished for some months
but then I worked on it again

augury no.15 progression, oil painting, abstract, work in progress
and now it looks like this.

I am not sure whether it is now a better painting; it is certainly a different painting than it was.  Sometimes after I work over a painting I feel a sort of nostalgia for its youth, so to speak, but it is never possible to go back.

augury no.14 progression, oil painting, abstract, work in progress
I also worked on this painting a tiny bit

whose orientation is still unclear
augury no.14 progression, oil painting, abstract, work in progress
and I'm calling it finished for now.

Please feel free to use your imagination to see various tonalities of reds & oranges... which my camera unfortunately does not differentiate between very well!  :)

2 comments:

Barbara Muir said...

Love these, and what you say. I understand the nostalgia for what was,
and the urge to move on. I just painted on a portrait completed in 2009. All of a sudden the shadows in one place on her dress made no sense. And then? Really it has to come down off the wall, and be quite changed.

Such is art, such is life. Love your work, and your posts.

XOXOXOXOXO Barbara

Verna Vogel said...

Thanks for your supportive comments Barbara! Good to know I'm not alone :) I worked on that really colourful one a bit more and am feeling better about it, though still nostalgic for its younger incarnation.

xoxoxoxo
V